1) First Meeting

    Grant knew how to track but it was still unlikely they had come this close to him through anything other than luck. Their good luck was his bad luck and also his good luck really… This gave him the opportunity to finish Grant and end their pursuit. It might be weeks before the others learned what happened here.

    There was a creak overhead and he ignored it as he sighted Brick and Bullock. The two of them were inviting targets at the best of times but walking together they were impossible to miss. They weren’t feared for their intelligence though.

    He held his breath, listened for his heart and then fired between beats, sending the round through Bullock’s eye and he began to adjust his aim and then the world fell apart around him.

~~~~~~

    The building had looked promising but as it turned out, it was as empty and barren as any other. It made sense really, why would there be anything to find in any of these structures after all this time? There was nothing here. There was nothing anywhere. The floor creaked under her feet and perhaps there was something below her to be found.

    A rifle blast made her leap into the air in fright and her feet came down hard and she felt something give and suddenly she was plummeting through a mess of broken wood and a cloud of dust.

    Somehow she remained upright as she landed and for a moment she felt only shooting pains in her legs and then a fist connected with her middle. It wasn’t a large fist but it struck directly into her solar plexus and she immediately folded, falling onto the floor. The dust was still settling and she couldn’t even see who the fist had come from.

    Garrett ignored them now that he had them floored and hit the ground himself and found his target again. Despite everything, Brick still hadn’t learnt how to take cover properly and the rifle bullet snapped neatly into his skull. Two down and three left. “Hundred and four.”

    He swept back and forth with his scope and though he couldn’t hear them, he could see them gesturing with their hands at each other. They clearly knew they were exposed and vulnerable and even if they were able to get him, it would cost another of their lives. He could see Grant’s hands furiously waving but his two compatriots didn’t want to die for him. It was almost amusing.

    Soto broke the stalemate, breaking cover and running. He hesitated, wanting to put a shot into his spine but it was easier to let him and the other two go. He didn’t want to shoot Grant in the back. Never in the back. He wanted to look the man in the eye before he killed him.

    Brick and Bullock were dead though. There was great satisfaction in that. He let them go. If Grant kept to his usual reckless nature, in a matter of hours he would be the hunted again.

    But he was still the hunter for the next few minutes. He hadn’t thought he had hit them that hard but they were still down and foetal.

    An uncontrollable squeak left her as she was pulled and then pushed flat on her face, the same hand that had punched her holding her neck as the other reached for her left ankle and then ran up her leg and then that hand was on her neck and the other was doing the same to her right leg. She jerked as that hand lifted the back of her shirt and reached around, creeping momentarily over her bum before withdrawing and then going up her shirt. The hand didn’t seem to find what it was looking for. It pulled the pack off her back and then seized her shoulder and flipped her over.

    She would have described him as good-looking if he hadn’t had the eyes of a corpse. The sightless stare somehow managed to pierce her. Her brain was saying to try and punch him in the throat but the rest of her was frozen in the face of those baleful eyes.

    But then his eyes became irrelevant as he suddenly took a great draught through his nose, he literally smelt her and it seemed to satisfy him, whatever that meant. He took his hand off her throat and sat back. He was still kneeling over her but no longer covering her. He kept staring and from her place on her back she had never felt as vulnerable, despite everything else.

    “What are you?” He finally asked in a voice that seemed out of practice. 

    “Pardon?” She half-swallowed the word.

    “You have no weapons. You’re on your own. What are you?”

    “No one. I’m no one.”

    He leaned forward. “Everybody’s someone.”

    “What are you?”

    Some life seemed to appear in his eyes momentarily. “I’m no one.”

    “Good to meet you.” She said weakly.

    He had no sense of humour as he continued to simply stare at her.

    “What are we doing?” She asked and he continued to gaze wordlessly at her. “If you’re going to rape me, just do it.”

    He stopped gazing at her and turned up at the ceiling and trembled and she knew she had made him angry. Very, very angry. He breathed heavily for a couple of minutes and then leaned forward, resting on his hands so that he covered her though he didn’t touch her, looking her directly in the eyes. Now it was her turn to tremble.

    “Don’t ever think that about me.” His lifeless eyes sparked momentarily and then he stood, leaving her there on the floor.

    She watched as he checked his rifle, a mostly wooden construct, holding it up to the light and removing the barrel momentarily before reaffixing it. He had the rifle and also a pistol holstered to his belt along with three different knives. She had a feeling he had more weapons.

    He stretched and then made to exit through the hole he had been shooting through.

    “Hey.”

    He stopped and fixed her with that reptilian glare.

    “Where are you going?”

    “Scavenging.” He turned away and left.

    She sat there for a moment, listening to the sound of him clambering over the rubble and then reached for her discarded pack and followed.

    He moved surprisingly fast and he was already halfway to his destination. It was easy to see that the dead man was dressed the same way as him. He picked over the body with practiced hands, stripping his pack clean and slinging his weapon next to his rifle. He moved onto the next one with the same speed, stripping that one of anything valuable even faster. Then he spat on the body.

    “Did you know them?”
    “Why are you following me?” He toned wearily.

    “Did you?”

    “Yes.”

    He had answered her question so she answered his. “I’ve got nowhere else to go. And you can take care of yourself.” The body with only one eye was proof of that.

    He understood what she was suggesting and he looked like he believed she was insane.

    “Until I find something better?” She shrugged, wondering how someone’s eyes could seemingly express only negative emotion. He didn’t say anything, fixing her with that stare again. It appeared he had no need to blink and she felt a muscle twitching in her neck. “Please say something.”
    “Something.” He grunted and turned away.

    “Is that a yes?”

    “Something.” He repeated as he trooped off.

    She was already feeling she had made a big mistake.

~~~~~~

    In the evening he shot a rabbit while barely breaking his stride. He beheaded it, skinned and gutted it on the move and without barely glancing at it. She at least understood all his knives now. They weren’t all for people but for hunting. It was certainly reassuring.

    She had never seen someone make a fire as quickly and with such seeming ease as he did. In a day where he had killed two men and killed and skinned a rabbit, the only thing that seemed to be bothering him was her.

    Garrett was bothered. Having a small red haired girl trotting in his footsteps was extremely perplexing. She made no sense to him whatsoever and not to anyone else either. He could only conclude that if she had any weapons, she kept them in her pack which was either the work of a great optimist or an idiot. It was hard to tell looking at her face. Her forehead was hidden by her fringe but her freckled cheeks and the lines around her mouth told him she was someone used to expressing positive things. There was something about freckled girls and positivity.

    He roasted the kill thoroughly and wished he had something more. A bird would have been much better. There wasn’t much choice though. There wasn’t much out there at all.

    She watched him smell the air. He did that a lot. She was glad because it made him smelling her less creepy. She wasn’t about to forget it though.

    He gave her half his rabbit without comment and after two days on biscuits, she was very grateful for the meat but his menacing stare made it impossible for her to say ‘thank you’. It made it impossible to say anything. The man who could shoot other men through the eyes at long distance might have made her feel protected but she couldn’t say that she felt safe or secure. The fire was nice though. She didn’t know how he did it but she definitely wished she knew how to make fire from nothing.

    “What are you doing?”
    “I’m trying to sleep.”
    “You don’t have a blanket?”

    She had curled up with her pack on her back to keep her warm as she faced the fire. The only thing to sleep on was her hands. “No.”

    “Where the hell did you come from?” He asked in a tone that wasn’t nasty so much as it was utterly confused. “Who doesn’t have a blanket?”

    “I didn’t choose to be out here.” She said as gently as she could despite her rising frustration.

    He made a low growling noise and then grunted. “Come here.”

    “What?”

    “Come here.” He was offering her half of what she recognised as a couple of wolf pelts stitched together. He was suggesting that they sleep side by side.

    “Um-“

    “Do you want to be warm or not?” Now there was definitely annoyance in his tone.

    This was a winning argument and regardless of the fact he was a stranger who had left her middle badly bruised and who had also run his hands over most of her body, she joined him. It helped that he seemed entirely indifferent to her physically which was a strange new experience. The wolf pelts were scratchy but definitely snug and warm. “Where did you get this?”

    “I made it.”
    “You made it?”

    “Yes.”

    “When?”
    “A long time ago.”

    “Why?”

    “They wanted to eat me so I killed them, ate them and turned their skins into bedding.”

    Beyond any shadow of a doubt, this was the most terrifying thing Alice had ever heard in her life. She felt very, very awake.

    Garrett was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that she was out in the world with no blanket and possibly no weapons. Saying that she had no choice suggested that she was either an outcast which was extremely unlikely because she was very attractive or she was a victim… which seemed much more likely. The thought that perhaps she wasn’t used to the way things were out here and hearing about someone killing and skinning was rather terrifying. But she had chosen to be here. If she wanted to be around him, she couldn’t be afraid of simple facts of life like it was a dog eat dog world and if you were the dog doing the eating, you were the one who got to stay warm at night.